All of these things said to a friend today, when she asked me about Madame Bovary. Unfortunately, I have this inability to Just Walk Away from an awful book or movie. I MUST finish it, and only then can I wipe it from my memory – leaving only enough to remind myself NEVER TO GO THERE AGAIN. (See also: Requiem For A Dream) The book is just…so mundane. And so full of people making poor choices, and then suffering from them, and never learning from them, so they go an make the same poor choices again. None of the characters are sympathetic, and I seriously doubt any lessons are going to be learned by them OR the reader. It is so awful that I intentionally spoiled the ending by reading more than one synopsis. And then reading a bit about why the book was written – which is interesting, because it looks like the author’s friends basically dared him to write a mundane book about people with romantic delusions…because every book he had tried to write before then was so chock full of romantic delusions that it was pure rubbish.

“I guess I feel somewhat better now that I know the book is SUPPOSED to be boring.”